“Mostly male, but many women too, who will sometimes come not having eaten for days, depressed and feeling ashamed. They can be quite defensive about their activities because their partners or husband or children are beginning to say they’re spending too much time online. There’s a lot of irritability and secrecy as a result.”

“Cyber relationships are interactive, you’re waiting for the relationship to come back to you and so you’ll prioritise it over work or your marriage. Whereas, a book is offline, it’s not interactive and there’s no neuronal circuitry reward at play because you already know roughly what’s coming your way. In other words, books don’t give us the same buzz.”